Is my radio posessed??? Strange reception issue.
 

Hey all,

I took my first trip with my '02 Boxster this past weekend. It was only from Charlotte, NC to Macon, GA but it was the longest to date. Coincidentally I had just been reading a post about the CDR 220 radio and how it has lousy reception which I believe they were blaming on the in windshield antenna. In fact, I'd post this in that thread but I can't seem to locate it at the moment. Now you'd think that having read that tidbit of information I would have brought along a couple of extra CD's.........but nooooooooo, not me. Now if reception were the only issue I wouldn't bother posting this but I had another strange issue. While blasting out one of my two AC/DC albums doing 80 with the top down I decided that maybe my ears could use a break. However when I went to turn it down the volume adjustment didn't do a dang thing. I tried muting the radio, turning the radio off and back on, removing the CD, switching back to FM (which low and behold also wasn't working) but nothing worked. No matter what I did when the CD came back on the volume was still blasting.......well as much as it can on the stock radio. To be quite honest, I kinda lost track of everything I tried at one point due to the excessive amounts of vulgar language flying around the situation. I think that after an hour of living with it and trying different things I finally got it to work again and it was fine the rest of the trip but I have no idea what the issue was.

As far as the radio reception goes.....I've made this trip many times and have never had a problem picking up radio stations in other vehicles however when I got out of range of Charlotte and used to TP button to find another station it would just keep going and going and going just like the Energizer Bunny. This is when I resigned myself to my AC/DC Back in Black and Razor's Edge albums and ran into the volume issue. However, while I was getting ready to leave Macon driving around town the TP button also wouldn't bring in any stations......not one!!! Now I knew even Macon must have a radio station of some sort that this thing should be able to pick up;). At this point I decided to tune the radio manually and low and behold there were plenty of stations to choose from. I didn't have any problem what so ever finding radio stations to listen to on the entire trip home. So I guess it turns out that the reception isn't all that bad but the scan feature doesn't work worth a lick. Of course this is assuming that that's what the TP button is for in the first place. I need to find that manual I guess.

So in the end I'm just curious if these are common problems with these radio's or is mine just special?:) I hate to change out the radio because I don't have a problem with the sound it puts out.

Jeff

I agree with u 100% about reception. I have a 2001 Boxster and a recent trip out of town revealed that reception is poor. I will check your alternative suggestions about how to get better reception when out of town. Our 2002 Camry gets way better reception out of town. For a Porsche, the radio quality is poor.

I'm not clear when you're talking about FM or AM, but I concur on most of this. I have the CDR-24 in my '08 Boxster and it sucks. It is THE worst, most user UNfriendly "entertainment" system I have ever experienced including the old 8-tracks I had in the 1970s. Generally, I turn it off. You can't ever see the FM radio frequency anyway - it's always that silly scrolling text that FM stations seem to transmit. No way to turn it off on these Becker units. My AM reception is non-existent unless I'm in a downtown metro area within sight of the AM transmitter, it seems like. :)

Porsche should dump Becker and move to something that works. There's my two cents.

That would be FM. I never thought of trying AM. I haven't listened to AM since I became yet another addition to the droves of politically apathetic people in this country:(

Jeff

Have people who have replaced the head unit experienced better reception/range with the built in antenna?
I have never liked window antennas because they have poor range capability. My first experience with a window antenna was on a 77 TransAm and that antenna stuck on/in the window sucked.

I will give it directional ability as it worked better driving towards a station as the antenna was in the windshield.